book police

no spine was cracked in the making of this ban

The other day, my sister in Boise forwarded me a list of newly-banned books from her local school district:

I know book banning is a serious and misguided canker in our culture at the moment, and that this (random and strange) list shouldn’t make me laugh. But reader, did I laugh!

We can only collectively wish our teens were looking up from their phones long enough to check out Allen Ginsberg’s (or ANY) collected poems at the library. In what world are we worried about kids reading this now-obscure 1950s beat poet? Or, more relevantly, the experience of a girl raised in and liberated from an extreme religious group?

Even more absurdly, rather than object to the books based on, you know, actually reading them, the committee (which did not include any librarians) relied on a review-rating site created by “concerned parents” in Florida. You can’t make this stuff up.

Of course, I understand the right and worry of parents over what they may deem inappropriate for their kids. But having conversations with your kids (or their teachers) about your values and what they’re reading is vastly more effective and reasonable than going top-down at the school district level.

Coinciding with my sister’s news was my reading of Yōko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, a dystopian novel about things that are “disappeared” from a secluded society. At first innocuous things like ribbons or perfume, then birds and people’s left legs. And eventually, of course, books. It’s a very beautifully written, almost meditative book, that made me think without beating me over the head with its themes. The ending was not what I expected and I highly recommend it.

More recently, I’ve begun reading/listening to Don Quixote. Written in the early 1600s and surprisingly hilarious, Don Quixote has gone mad from reading too many chivalrous tales about knights. To protect him, his friends go through his books and throw most of his library out the window to be burned. Proof that book banning is nothing new. Though the West Ada District meeting was closed to the public, here we have a transcript from Don Quixote’s committee:

“…What are we to do with these little books that are left?”

“These must be, not chivalry, but poetry,” said the curate; and opening one he saw it was the “Diana” of Jorge de Montemayor, and, supposing all the others to be of the same sort, “these,” he said, “do not deserve to be burned like the others, for they neither do nor can do the mischief the books of chivalry have done, being books of entertainment that can hurt no one.”

“Ah, señor!” said the niece, “your worship had better order these to be burned as well as the others; for it would be no wonder if, after being cured of his chivalry disorder, my uncle, by reading these, took a fancy to turn shepherd and range the woods and fields singing and piping; or, what would be still worse, to turn poet, which they say is an incurable and infectious malady.”

Fortunately, it seems book bans tend to bolster curiosity and encourage an uptick in sales. Who knows? Maybe it will inspire some rebellious Idaho teen to crack open a poetry book or even—gasp—become an “incurable” poet herself.

What’s the strangest/most outrageous book ban you’ve seen?

Cheers,

Lacy

P.S. Speaking of Florida, author Lauren Groff is opening a bookstore there called The Lynx, that will emphasize banned titles.

P.P.S. My favorite book ban justification was for Art Spiegelman’s Maus series—graphic novels about the Holocaust, where the Jews are depicted as mice and Germans as cats—for “mouse nudity.” lol

P.P.P.S. I had a flash story published this week in phoebe journal! Check it out if you feel so inclined.